


We Will Become Silhouettes

by black_ink_tide



Series: Such Great Heights / Brother!Anders [2]
Category: Dragon Age
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-07-20
Updated: 2011-07-20
Packaged: 2017-10-21 13:59:03
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 6
Words: 15,181
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/225966
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/black_ink_tide/pseuds/black_ink_tide
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sequel to Such Great Heights.</p><p>Anders was saved by Malcolm Hawke and raised by the Hawke family in Lothering as one of the kids. He's kind of totally in love and lust with his for-all-intents-and-purposes-sister, Marian. It's mutual.</p><p>Life in Lothering and Kirkwall.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Lothering, Autumn

“Marian, be careful, that dish is hot.”

The warning came too late. She hissed through her teeth, feeling the scorched skin harden on the curve of her index finger and the fleshy mound between her wrist and thumb.

“Fuck!”

“Marian, please,” Leandra frowned at her from across the table.

“Well it sodding hurts, _Mother_ ,” she sucked on her finger reflexively, immediately regretting it.

“We are at a wedding, dear…”

Well, a wedding feast. The ceremony had been blessedly brief, the young bride and groom looking appropriately besotted with each other as their hands were bound together, voices catching as they recited vows. Marian, meanwhile, was starving and the wafting smells of the meal that awaited them had not helped quiet the loud rumblings in her belly, earning a friendly elbow in the ribs from her father who sat beside her, grinning all the while.

The warm colored paper lanterns were lit overhead, and the food spread out before them smelled delicious and rich… more rich than anything they had eaten in a long time… The crops this year had been meager, to say the least, and it had done nothing to ease the concerns that something was happening to the soil that couldn’t be helped with any amount of rotation or fertilization. But in celebration of the wedding of Campbell and Lainie, the community had come together, piecing whatever they had to spare together. It was a happy night, the laughter and music and food and drink staving off the shadows, at least for one night.

Anders materialized at her side, dropping heavily onto the bench seat beside her.

Malcolm’s face lit up, “Anders! There you are. I saved a seat for you. Where were you, son?”

Malcolm Hawke loved weddings, possibly more than the rest of his family combined. Marian knew that he had started to think about her wedding… which, at seventeen, she had only considered abstractly… and disdainfully. Once, talking with Anders as they sat up late beside the fire she had declared to him that she didn’t want to wear a dress on the inevitable day. She knew her mother wanted her to wear the dress she had worn, a frilled monstrosity that lurked in the recesses of her wardrobe like a festooned spectre. Anders had then dared her to try it on… which she promptly did, owing to the fact that the rest of the family was away, staying near the lake for Carver and Bethany’s nameday. He had laughed so hard that tears streamed down his cheeks and he tumbled out of his chair. Not only was the dress completely un-Marianlike… Leandra was apparently considerably bustier than her daughter, and the dress floated around her in derisive mockery of this fact.

The memory of that night made her smile whenever she thought of it. It was so… perfect.

“Got in a bit late… I stood at the back. Lovely ceremony. I teared up and everything.” He was dressed, like the rest of them, in his nicest clothes… which still showed a bit of wear and tear. His hair was cropped close to his head, and the short gold strands glinted in the warm light.

“This looks great!” he grinned, drinking freshly poured ale and looking over the spread appreciatively as he wiped foam from his lip. He reached for the handle of the large spoon jutting from the nearest dish.

“Careful, it’s hot,” Marian said glumly, watching the muscle in his forearm bunch as he reached past her.

“Well, of course it’s hot. That is a very hot dish. I can see that from here,” he looked at her then, and noticed her red hand, held pitifully out in front of her on the white table cloth in a claw. “Really?”

“It was too far away and I was too hungry.”

Malcolm chuckled quietly across from them.

“Overeager, as always. Give it to me,” he sighed with a longing glance at the mouth-watering roast that would just have to wait.

She turned then, facing him more to extend her hand to him. Held between his own, damp from the ale he’d been holding, he examined it.

“It’s not bad, I can fix it.”

“Not at the table, please,” Leandra said softly.

They were, after all, in public.

Anders nodded, “Of course.”

He stood, grabbing a dinner roll from the basket as he went, shoving it into his mouth, “Follow me then, yeah? We’ll be quick about it…”

He had grown, and now he towered over the family, even Da. Anders blood, not Ferelden. Taller and leaner than most of those around him, he always stood out. Foreign and familiar… that was him. Even the way that he walked was different, but somehow indefinable. A longer gait, a languid rhythm… but all him.

Following behind him through the mingling crowd, she focused on the nape of his neck. The skin there was alluring, vulnerable and masculine… she blinked, imagining herself pressing a kiss to the freshly exposed skin, tasting him with the tip of her tongue.

Carver and Bethany sat together at a table with their friends, boys and girls all roughly the same age. Bethany waved eagerly at her as they walked by, her other hand clasped tightly by her best friend Jolie. Carver, his hair greased into an awkward assemblage he no doubt thought looked suave, ignored her entirely.

Anders lead her to a quiet spot behind the Murray family’s stable. She breathed deeply the smell of the hay and the autumn dust.

“It won’t take much,” he said reaching for her hand again. She looked at her fingers, held carefully between his palms. The blue glow illuminated his face, reflected in the brass earring he wore in his right ear.

She sighed, unable to hold back the sound of pleasure in her throat. Cooling ripples of healing magic coursed through her skin, up her arm, skipping as light as a stone thrown across water. All over her skin she felt it, him. To her scalp and her toes. Him. She let out a long breath, shivering, feeling her nipples tighten beneath the soft lavender shift she wore. She shifted slightly, hoping that he couldn’t see them in the moonlight.

“That feels all right?” his voice had dropped, and sounded impolitely thick to her now. As if he knew what it felt like, to feel him like this... inside. He traced the line of her finger with the tip of his own, still glowing faintly.

“Yes. Good,” she looked up at him, but his eyes were focused on her hand.

These moments, frozen and random, were always somehow simultaneously calm and unstable between them. In the dark. In the secret spaces when they were alone, when he touched her. Innocent affectionate gestures, healing wounds, always… as a brother and a sister.

The skin of her finger was rosy, but not hot, and he turned his attention to the mound of her thumb.

“You… you cut your hair,” she said. It had been long this morning, before he had vanished for most of the day, gone on one of his walks.

He smiled, “The wind kept blowing it in my eyes.”

“I like it like this,” he looked at her then, “You look good with ears.”

There were no lanterns here, only moonlight. A fiddler began playing, likely standing beside the wedding table, and the song carried on the crisp air to them.

Her skin was healed but he still held her, cupped between his staff calloused hands. He continued to glow.

“This song’s called The Kiss,” she whispered, “they play it so that they kiss at the end.”

“I am aware. This isn’t the first wedding I’ve ever been to, you know.”

“It’s pretty…” she tilted her head, “but actually a really sad song if they sang the lyrics -- they drown.”

“Tragic,” he smirked.

“Yeah. But they drown together, so that’s romantic, right? Where do you go, Anders?” the question tumbled out of her throat.

The wry smile at the corner of his mouth faded, and he did not look up. He squeezed her hand, the glow dimming.

“I walk.”

“Where?”

“It… I need to move, Marian. I just need to…” he shook his head, “staying still… I don’t know… I’m not meant for it.”

“I miss you. When you go. I worry sometimes that you won’t come back.”

It was an admission she not intended to make. And now it hung there, embarrassing. Childish. Of course he would come back. This was his home. Their home. Where else would he go?

“Sometimes I think that I won’t either,” he was quiet, honest, for a moment he was nothing but her Anders who told her everything, held back nothing, “but, I always do.”

The song wound down, a long note held, wavering with all the love it bore. There was applause and cheering as the unseen blushing couple in a world apart from them on the other side of the stable kissed at their table to the delight of the party.

“ _I sink into a starry night,  
buried by a rolling tide.  
I float away without a fight,  
with my true love at my side_.”

He recited the lyrics tunelessly, set to no music. He gently let go of her hand.

“Da’ll want to dance with you,” he said, starting to head back towards the party.

“Don’t I know it… but not until after I eat. I’ll faint otherwise. He can dance with Mother in the meantime. Or Bethany. Or you.”

He laughed, looking at the table where Malcolm and Leandra sat, side by side, two empty seats across the table from them waiting for Marian and him to return.


	2. Lothering, Winter

Lothering, Winter

He smelled death and in his chest his heart raged.

“Marian!”

The air was still and stagnant, frozen like the rest of the Maker-Forsaken valley. Nothing moved. No animals stirred. Nothing breathed, sending steam up towards the white endless sky. And that scared him.

She had been missing for three days. Three.

He tried to run, sinking thigh deep into the snow for his effort. Struggling. Fighting. And all he could smell was snow and faint death.

And blood.

A black still body lay ahead of him, dusted with new snow.

Too big. Too big to be her. Too still.

He called out her name again. No answer. No movement.

Malcolm and Carver were searching as well, but he had neither seen nor heard them for days. Three days and nights alone in the valley, pitching camp alone as best he could, keeping himself warm with real fire, no magic, because he needed to be strong when he found her, needed to be able to heal her.

The body was enormous. A bear. A dead bear with a dagger lodged in its thick throat, jaw hanging loose and open, eyes open and frozen.

The hilt of the blade was hers. He knew it. He had traced the traced the etched feather with his thumb countless times. She killed a bear… alone.

She had come with that little twat Eric into the valley. He was supposed to return her that night… but came back alone. They’d gotten separated, ( _they had an argument and she had stormed off… stubborn idiot_!)… and the boy showed up long after nightfall, his dark red hair mussed and cheeks splotchy, blazing red with cold and fear.

Anders was the first one out, headlong into the snow, calling her name.

“Don’t be dead… please…” he whispered, placing his wrapped hand on the icy coat of the bear and using the other to retrieve her blade. It was as close to a prayer as he was ever likely to make.

The trees were mostly dead here. He scanned the area, looking for anything that might guide his way.

Dark snow. Blood.

He left the body of the bear and followed the faint trail, smelling it almost more than seeing it.

And there, there, not far… a shape that was not a tree, not a boulder or a bear. Marian.

He bolted, feet unnaturally light on the snow, and felt the magic crackle in his veins. She was still and looked so small.

He called out to her wordlessly, but she did not stir.

He tumbled into the snow beside her. She was partially buried and unconscious. He felt her pulse and frantically dug her out, revealing her thighs, and her legs, and her feet.

“Andraste’s tits…” he choked. Her right ankle had been gnawed open by the rusted metal of a buried bear trap. The bone was there, he could see it, broken but not dead. She had tied her worn leather belt around her leg, above the knee, before losing consciousness. “Good girl.”

He took her face between his hands. Her skin was hard and faintly blue, eyelashes snowy, shut.

“Marian,” he said her name, “I’m here. I’ve got you.”

He pulled off the snug knitted cap he’d worn and put it on her head, trying to preserve any body heat she had left. He turned his attention to the trap. It was old, and she had most likely stepped too heavily in the snow, sinking into the maw.

He looked for a mechanism that would open it… but there was nothing. He tried to pry it open but couldn’t do it, not in the state it was in. Finally, with a frustrated sound, he touched it and shattered the damn thing with magic; the bottom pieces falling apart like thin spring ice.

The teeth remained in her leg, and he carefully pulled them apart and away from her. Fresh blood flowed. He tore the rest of her shredded pant leg apart and quickly reset the snapped bone, mending it with as potent healing magic as he could muster. His glowing hands shook.

She did not move, did not respond to the bone being set, and she felt so very, very cold and firm under his fingertips.

He closed the skin, not bothering with the deep mottled bruising that spread up and down from where the trap had broken her leg. He crawled up, cradling her in his arms, a cold dead weight against him. But the pulse beat regularly in her throat, if not strongly.

They were in the middle of nowhere. He looked around them… nearly square in the center of the valley there was no shelter, no caves… nothing. Just the trees.

Adrenaline fueled the decision to lift her, holding her tightly against his chest as he moved them from the open valley to the edge of trees. He sought a cluster of thin saplings, dying but not yet brittle.

Holding her awkwardly with one arm, he pointed his staff at the space between the trees and melted the snow in the center of a small circular clearing, using enough heat to dry the soil. Gently as he could, he set her down in the center of the tiny clearing, wrapped her in his outer cloak and took his staff in hand. Using what he would later be able to describe as being something between magic a sheer projected will, he bent the thin trees together, entwining the ends of their branches above his head so that they came, and stayed, together, forming a structure around them. It took some sustained magic to retain the integrity of the structure, but it would hold.

He pulled the oiled canvas he had been using to make his tent each night out of his pack and wrapped and secured it around the exterior of their conical safehouse.

If more snow fell in the night, it would only insulate them further, held at bay by the trees, the ceiling of knit branches, and the canvas. He had food, water, and magic. He would keep Marian alive.

Inside, it already felt warmer, but it was not enough. His cloak wrapped around her was still quite dry, and he had another dry blanket in his pack. He stripped himself down to his smalls and then wordlessly set to the task of removing all of her sodden freezing layers of clothing, stripping her completely, and holding her against himself, flesh to flesh. He wrapped the blanket around them both, careful to tuck it under and around her feet. Anders wrapped the cloak outside the blanket, pillowing her head against his arm. He felt the chill of her flesh deep in his core, and it horrified him.

Still, her breath came against him, cool but steady. Tucking her head beneath his chin, he closed his eyes and warmed her using magic and his own natural body heat.

He felt her size... she just seemed so small out there in the snow.

She was compact but not small, lithe and powerful with sturdy Hawke bones beneath taut musculature and smooth pale skin, marked by only the faint ghost of scars. He had healed her for so many years… he had learned to heal by healing her.

He reached down, keeping both of them swaddled and took one of her feet in his hand, sending more warmth into the blue appendage. Her toes were dark. I can fix it.

He warmed the other foot, and then returned his both arms around her, rubbing her back briskly.

Heat. Not too much. As much as he safely could. His hastily built room trapped the warmth well, and he could no longer see his breath, or hers, in the air.

Dusk came. Then night. Beside them, he conjured a small blue flame that emitted warmth but no smoke.

When she finally began to shiver against him, he kissed her temple, elated.

When she gripped him back, murmuring nonsense into his chest, he murmured back.

 _I love you. I love you. I love you._

When she opened her eyes, teeth chattering, he kissed her without thinking, feeling the life pulse in her skin.

“Anders… am I dead?”

“No.”

“…are you sure?”

“I’m positive.”

“I think I killed a bear.”

He laughed, “You did.”

“A big f-fucking bear.”

“Massive. Biggest bear I’ve ever seen.”

“Mmm.”

She moved a hand against his chest, her fingers were still cold, but not the deadly cold that they had been. Tracing a small random design on his skin, she lightly grazed his nipple and he gasped.

“Sorry,” her hand stilled. “Where are we?”

“In the valley, where I found you. And your bear.”

“I want to skin it… wear it as a coat,” she grinned, eyes closed, “Are we home?”

“No. You were out there for days… when you can I want you to drink a little water.”

“Do you have whiskey?”

“I… yes. A little.”

He thought about the tiny silver flask somewhere near the bottom of his pack… vicious stuff better used for disinfecting.

“Can I have that instead?”

She snuggled in closer to him. He felt the light brush of her lips against the tender skin of his throat, heard the scrape of his stubble against her.

“Marian…”

“I’m not fully c-convinced that I’m n-not dead, Anders,” she kissed him again, so softly it was barely anything, “This doesn’t seem real.”

“It’s real. Really real,” he replied quickly, feeling a surge of something primal course through him.

He was now very much aware of the shape of her, hard bone and soft flesh, warmed by his touch, by his skin, his power. The smell of her. Familiar, family, beneath the cold and the blood. He felt his body respond to her, thinking, regardless of how hard he tried to think about anything else, about the perfectly imperfect triangle of dark hair between her thighs he had seen when he was undressing her, feeling her cool thighs around and between his own…

“Anders…”

She felt him, hard against the shallow dip near her hip. Oh, Maker help him.

He froze, his back stiff, every muscle tight.

She pushed back against him, very softly, and with that tiny moment let a delicate moan loose.

He didn’t thrust, as much as all his instincts may have wanted him to. Instead, he responded with a jagged breath and a slight gentle rocking, hard flesh greeted by the soft, pliant skin of her belly.

She shifted, as she could, better aligning them together. The only thing between them was the soft thin fabric of his smalls, and he could feel the heat of her, of her, against him.

His control broke when he felt the echo of wet heat through fabric against on his cock, and he thrust in earnest as much as he could on his side. Her mouth fell open, lips pink now and not blue at all. He felt alive, the way he did when he heard music… feeling something bolder and truer than chance fill his pores and his mind and his heart. Something like music, that had existed long before either of them and would exist long after they were dust. Music and instinct and, Maker, he tasted her… he felt drums inside.

He rolled over her, his hips snug against hers. He fit urgently into her cleft, held back from fully entering her by a thin layer of linen. It was enough; he ignited. He snaked one arm out of the blanket and cloak. He touched her face. She kept her hair long, normally plaited long and thick against her back, it had come loose and spilled out under her, bits of dirt and frost and blood… but he’d never seen anything be so beautiful. He brushed a thick matted tangle of her hair away from her face.

“I wanted this,” she murmured, content and dreamy, her eyes drifting closed, “you.”

He saw the flush in her cheeks, and knew in an jarring clear instant, that what was there, beneath that perfect skin and the constellation of freckles across her nose and cheeks, was not just desire but also fever. Male-instinct ebbed and healer faculty took over. _Infection_. The wound…

He stopped, his stomach clenching at the pained sound she made when he did.

She looked up at him, confusion and the glaze of fever muddling what was otherwise very clearly need and desire. He rolled to her side.

“You don’t want me?”

“I do…”

“Anders, I’m sorry…”

He scoffed, settling his trembling hand on her leg as she spoke, sending warm tentative tendrils into her skin, chasing out anything that would hurt her. “For what?”

“Eric.”

He cupped her jaw in his hand for just a moment longer.

“I… I thought about… I closed my eyes, and I thought about…”

He faltered.

“You. I didn’t wait for you… because you don’t… I didn’t want to wait anymore, Anders… I wanted to know what it was like…”

“And?” he winced, trying to focus on healing.

“Awkward. It was awkward.”

He laughed, a hard, aggressive release of all the things stirring inside of him… possessiveness and loss and need and--

“Is it always like that? I know you did it too.”

“What?”

“With Eva. In the barn.”

Eva… black hair and blue eyes and an… easy disposition. She was like a softer rounder version of Marian, a likeness she admitted to. She was willing to meet him in the barn. Willing to let him explore her and willing to let him imagine that she was someone else, provided that he showed her magic. Eva loved stars… and he made stars that hung in the rafters above them like bright diamonds, close enough to run her delicate unblemished hands through… tiny comets shooting across the shadows for her delight.

“I heard you. I heard your voice. I… listened. That’s… gross. I’m sorry. You sounded so…”

He had wanted it to be her… but it was too much… too close. She was his family… his sister if not his blood. But more than that… more than he could ever really have. She listened to him, to them! He blushed to his ears, embarrassed and angry. At himself and at her.

“It hurt. If it was you, it wouldn’t have. You'd never hurt me, Anders.”

He didn’t reply to that. He silently focused on chasing and eradicating the infection inside of her. He hated Eric. He hated him for taking that from her and for hurting her. He hated himself slightly more for wishing it had been him instead. That it had been him breaking through the membrane inside of her like a ritual, a rite of passage, a blood rite. He'd thought about feeling her clench around him and then ease, adjust, take him inside… seeing it in her face, knowing that it was him… it would always be him. And her.

She would remember nothing of that time in the valley with him.

Later, after she was home and fed and had slept for nearly two days in her own bed, nursed by copious amounts of magic and soup and Malcolm's special occasion whiskey she would tell him that she could remember tying the belt around her thigh. She remembered trying desperately to stay awake in the snow for what seemed like years. Then... nothing.

She asked him what else had happened. He told her the truth. Mostly. He found her, healed her, warmed her. She'd always have a scar from the trap, a brutal looking band that completely encircled her leg just above her ankle. She liked it.

She regretted not getting the bear's skin, but was glad to have her knife back.

Anders would always think that it was better that she didn’t really hear him confess anything ( _I love you_ ) to her or her confession to him. She couldn’t remember him holding her naked against the inhuman hot-coal heat of his body. She wouldn’t know the way they had fit together, nearly completely.

The trouble was, he knew, that he did. _Could_. Would.


	3. 3. Kirkwall, Summer

Marian screamed, feeling her ribs crunch under the impact of the Templar’s heavily armored foot. A blast of bright energy knocked him off his feet and away from her. She reeled, stars in her vision.

He was the last of them, and the air hung still and heavy with the spent magic and blood and sweat of battle.

Bethany crouched by her side, protective, staff in her hand.

But this was no battle. There was no honor here. This was a dogfight over a bone.

“I’m all right,” she said to Bethany, voice low.

Her sister helped her stand, the more petite Hawke sister supporting the taller. She looked to Varric, the dwarf, who was pointedly standing back, closer to the stairs, a mass of dead templars heaped between them.

“Anders can fix it,” Bethany said, smiling through the blood and soot on her face. _She is a child still_.

Reminded of his presence ( _the phantom of him, more like_ ) she turned to see Anders, who was staggering, no longer glowing, and slowly closing the distance between himself and the Tranquil man.

Tranquility was never easy to see in person, and she had to forcibly will herself to look at him directly. The older man was handsome, branded and… no longer Tranquil.

“Anders…” he blinked, seeing no one in the room besides the lean blonde man who stood before him, “What have you done-“

She gasped when Anders took the man’s face between his hands, silencing him with a devouring kiss.

Bethany’s fingers tightened on her upper arm.

“I’m so sorry, Karl…” he held his face still, his fingers curled against the bearded line of his jaw, thumbs worrying the rise of his cheekbone, “How did they…”

“They found a letter I was writing.”

“To me?”

“Yes. Who else?” he smiled ruefully, “You little punk.”

Anders shifted his weight, gripping the mans face tighter as if he could physically force his attention to stay on him, present, _alive_ , “Karl. I got here too late-“

“It’s like you… what have you done to yourself, Anders?" he touched Anders' face and frowned, brow furrowed in concerntration beneath the brand, "Inside-“

“I’m so sorry-“

“A… a _spirit_. Oh, Anders…”

“I should have come sooner… it’s fresh. They just did it, didn’t they!?”

“Dammit, stop! Anders, what did you do?!”

“Karl…” Anders sagged against him.

“It won’t last. It’s fading. Please, Anders…” Karl brushed Anders’ face with a tenderness that caused Marian to look away, an intruder in this private moment. She heard him then, softly, “Kill me. I don’t want this. Please, love.”

Anders balked, his fists balling in the fabric of the man’s robes.

Through thick dark lashes, Marian watched as the man brought his arms gently up around Anders. Anders gripped him back, like a man drowning clings to a bit of floating wood. He whispered something against Anders’ ear, quietly enough that even in the ringing silence she could not hear.

Unceremoniously, his arms fell away from Anders, returning placidly, limply, at the man’s side ( _dead already_ ) and in an savage, impossibly fast movement Anders had pulled a blade from his side and plunged it into the man’s spine with surgical precision. He fell with him to the ground, not allowing the body to hit the tiled floor hard, rather taking the brunt of the fall himself.

He did not move. None of them did. Marian felt the shiver of approaching danger… they couldn’t just stay here… Varric was shifting in her peripheral vision, his crossbow at the ready in his hands.

“Anders…” she said, his name a foreign shape in her mouth.

He didn’t respond. He was just a dark hunched shape.

Bethany parted from her side and stepped over to him, her boots crunching in broken glass. Marian watched her beautiful sister carefully sink to her knees at his side, one small pale hand coming to rest on the bent curve of his neck, stroking him. Reconnecting with the brother she had lost so long ago.

“There wasn’t anything you could do, Anders,” she said softly, “It’s what I would want, too.”

 _Maybe not such a child afterall._

He looked at her, and Marian could see the glint of his dark eyes even from across the room.

“We have to go,” Bethany said, “Before more templars come.”

“It’s my fault…” he said, barely audible, barely words.

“No. It’s theirs,” Marian said, hard, and his eyes snapped to her.

She thought she saw the faint flicker of blue in his face and the exposed skin of his hands, but it was gone before she could blink.

“Goodbye,” he slid the man’s eyelids closed with ink-stained fingertips.

*

She couldn’t sleep.

Bethany had tried to help with the ribs, but was exhausted from the day and had never really learned too much more about healing... but to her credit, the girl had a way with fire.

The curved bones inside were, as far as Marian could judge, pretty well fucked.

The pain gnawed at her… but so did vivid images of what had happened.

The whiskey that burned a path from her throat to her belly did nothing to ease either.

She wasn’t haunted by the death toll of the evening… she had seen more than enough of it between the Blight and her year in Kirkwall to pretty much blunt any of the impact or horror of death and killing. But Anders… a stranger with a demon inside, as far as she could ascertain. Fuck. _This is why we can never have nice things..._

She rose and dressed herself, awkwardly, hissing in pain.

With the ease of a well-armed native, she made her way through the city, from Lowtown to Darktown. Her hand pressed flat against the splintered wood of his clinic’s door. The clinic, she noted, was beside the subterranean entrance to the Amell estate, and she wondered if he picked this spot on purpose or if it was just another _spectacularly_ random coincidence.

He was awake and sitting in a chair near the back of the clinic before a dead fire, his legs sprawled in front of him. She observed calmly that there was a body beside him covered with a thin blanket. Lovely. A clinic _and_ a morgue _and_ his home.

“Mother doesn’t believe us that you are in Kirkwall,” she said, pushing the broken door open with her good hand, “Said we’d gone daft. She checked us for recent head trauma.”

He jerked forward but did not look at her, “Who can blame her?”

“Quite a night, huh?” she leaned against one of the supporting columns as a wave of pain radiated from her torso.

He looked up at her, and even in the dim lighting, she could see the dark shadows under his eyes, his face pale and drawn.

“Your ribs… do you want me to…” he stood slowly, rising to his full height.

“Yeah.”

He pointed at one of the low cots. She moved to it, taking his offered hands without recognition as she gingerly lowered herself into a seated position.

She lifted the edge of her tunic the edge of it bunched just beneath the swell of a small unbound breast. Massive dark fresh bruises spread from like muddy water from hip to armpit, fading at the edges. His face was impassive.

She sat, careful to keep her knees from brushing his.

“Hmm,” he brushed her with a gentle touch. “Lay down.”

She did, wincing and gritting her teeth as she did. He eased her back.

“So, Leandra doesn’t believe you… what does Malcolm Hawke think?”

Her eyes unfocused for a moment, feeling the tendrils of his magic coiling and straightening the bones inside her flesh.

“Not much. He’s dead.”

He stopped and exhaled, his shoulders caving noticeably, “When?”

“Nearly four years ago now.”

“Templars?”

“No. Fever.”

“Fever?”

Out of the coat, out of the feathers, she had a better idea of the size of him. He was incredibly thin, thinner than she had ever seen him, but not weak. His shoulders bunched with long lean muscle, his head dipping near hers and in the light she saw silver strands in his blonde hair.

“It happened fast. There wasn’t anything anyone could do…” she spoke matter of factly. She could talk about the amount of blood her managed to vomit on her, or the profanities he spat at her in a delirium before the end came without feeling… anything. It was a fact. Part of the story of Malcolm Hawke. It was always going to be the way his story ended, right?

She stared up at the ceiling, feeling a nearly forgotten sense of calm as Anders’ hands returned to her. Her bones knit under his touch, which hurt like a bitch, but still...

She’d not talked about Malcolm’s death for years. Mother had never wanted to know. And it wasn’t something she wanted to share with Bethany or Carver. Her voice was soft now, but placid, “I was the only one with him when it happened. He demanded that Mother take them away… he didn’t want them there… to see it. It was… terrible. Dying is so degrading.”

“He let you stay?”

“I wouldn’t leave.”

She had never felt so alone as she did the moment after he stopped breathing and the muscles in his tortured face relaxed. It was as if the world stopped moving outside, like everything just stopped with his heartbeat. He had always been incredible, charming and capable and skilled and… Da. Between one breath and the next, he left her alone in that room with a body that had no charm, no magic, no life… a body she dutifully washed and dressed and arranged into a tableau of dignity before their family would return to see him. To say goodbye to something that wasn’t him any longer.

She hissed under his hands as a particularly splintered bone found its proper position, curving back into one smooth line.

“Carver too.”

“Shit, Marian,” he looked up at her face, pausing, “He caught Malcolm’s fever?”

“No.”

She told him everything while he listened and continued to silently heal her. The damage was extensive and he took his time. As she spoke, she heard the cold detachment in her voice abstractly. Everything was strained… being close to Anders threw into sharp relief all that had changed since he left.

She killed people for money now. To survive. And she was good at it… even enjoyed it sometimes. The blood on her clothing was, more often than not, not her own.

“And you fight with a bow now… the Marian Hawke I knew always used a blade.. or two,” he mused with a professional conversational tone, pulling her tunic back down, “stay there. Rest for a bit.”

“I found it was a lot harder to kill on a regular basis that close up. Ranged suits me better in this line of work.”

“What happened tonight, Anders?”

He frowned, looking down at his hands, “I couldn’t leave him like that.”

“Karl?”

He rubbed his chin thoughtfully, “It’s been a rough couple of years, Marian.”

“Please don’t call me that,” she snapped.

“Sorry. _Hawke_.”

“You still go by Anders?”

“It’s my name.”

“Yeah… but not really.”

He laughed, a bitter edge to it, tinged with exhaustion and what she recognizes as grief, “It suits me I guess.”

“Tell me about your spirit-friend?”

He sighs, and shakes his head, leaning back away from her, his face in shadow.

She cleared her throat, “Karl. He was… he was yours?”

“No, Hawke,” he scrubbed his face with his hands, stubble rasping against dry skin, “I don’t want to talk about him. Not tonight.”

“Okay. Sure.”

“Someday… I’ll tell you about him, who he _was_ someday.”

“I’m sorry for your loss.”

“I’m sorry for yours.”

Both voices were tight and strangely hollow.


	4. 4. Kirkwall, Winter.

“Hawke? Your front door is wide open. I… are those _scones_?!”

Hawke knelt in front of the hearth, carefully moving lightly browned scones from the iron bakestone to a platter. She smiles up at him, a swipe of flour across the bridge of her nose, “Why yes, Anders, they _are_ scones.”

“Da’s recipe?”

He shut the door and entered the room. She felt a bright little jolt in her chest as his face opened up and he briskly walked from the doorway to her.

“Clotted cream and strawberry jam and everything…” he all but leered at the little diamond shaped pastries heaped on the one unchipped platter in Gamlen’s hovel. The room was filled with the familiar smell of home. Scones were the only food Da ever made… delightful little treasures that he would make for them on during particularly miserable winter days… which in Lothering were significantly more miserable than Kirkwall… in some ways.

And he always made them for—

“Mother’s nameday. Bethany took her to window shop in Hightown… I thought…” she shrugged, “For old times’ sake. Did you need something?”

“Huh? Oh… it’s… I just wanted to talk.”

“Talk?”

He reached over and brushed the flour from her nose, “About the Deep Roads.”

“Oh. Well. It's going to be terrible. I know that. I mean, it’s not exactly my idea of a pleasurable holiday.”

“Nor should it be. No I mean…” he looked at her for a long moment, mouth slightly open as the seemed to falter, his eyes creasing as he weighed what to say, then let out a scoffing breath and shook his head, “Never mind.”

“That is the tone you use when you want to tell me a Warden Secret, only to decide _just_ when I get interested that you can tell me nothing. It’s a cruel game you play, Anders.”

“Sorry. Communicating. Not one of my strengths.”

“Try one,” she lifted the platter in front of him, “Let me know if they’re any good?”

He took one without hesitation. She noticed his hand was bandaged in linen.

He bit into it and closed his eyes.

“Oh, _Hawke_.”

He chewed slowly, his eyes still closed.

She watched him expectantly, taking the time to observe the muscle in his jaw.

“Is it good?”

“Hawke… no. No. It’s… terrible,” he still had his eyes closed, and spoke around the scone, “Where’s a bin?”

“It’s bad?! I made then just the way he did—“

“Bin?!”

“What? Oh, here,” she handed him a small bin and he took it, turning away from her before spitting the remnants of the scone into it.

“It tastes like dirt! Did you add dirt?”

“No! Of course not.”

“Like… stale savory dirt. And the aftertaste! I need you to promise me something, Hawke…” his shoulders shook with laughter, “Never bake unattended again, all right? Promise me.”

She let out a frustrated growl, her hands balled at her sides.

“Promise?”

“Fine. Yes. But what am I going to do now? They’ll be back--”

“I can help.”

“You remember?”

“Of course I do.”

He scraped a clean tea towel over his tongue and gagged, “I need a drink. Water?”

“Whiskey?”

“Of course…” he smirked, the line of his shoulders softening faintly, “That sounds great. Please?”

As she poured him a small glass, she shrugged out of his coat and rolled up the sleeves of the linen shirt he wore beneath. Patched and worn to threadbare it hung off of the sharp angular lines of his torso and smelled strongly of him… sweat and herbs and Anders.

She handed him the glass and he took it, fingers brushing hers. He tipped it back, “Better.”

“I don’t know what I did wrong…”

“You’re just a terrible cook, Hawke. You always have been,” he laughed kindly, eyes glittering at her over the edge of the glass, “Remember that bread you made? Carver and I nearly broke our teeth. I was unwisely optimistic that you had changed in the last ten years.”

She mused, chuckling with frustration, “I can fire explosive arrows at oncoming raiders and kill five, ten at a time… like it’s nothing. I don’t break a sweat. But I can’t bake a scone to save my life.”

“Well, we all have our struggles…” he smirked and turned from her, glass still in hand, to survey what was left of her ingredients.

She remained where she was, watching the line of his back as he started to pull the items together, measuring and sifting, with practiced ease. He paused now and then to sip a little more whiskey, the sides of his glass now lightly dusted with flour. The dry ingredients came together as loose crumbs.

She picked up the bottle and another glass and joined him, pouring for herself, “Little more?”

“A finger, if you would. I don’t really drink anymore… haven’t had anything that nice in a long time.”

She sniggered and obliged, then watched his shoulders work and he brought the mixture in the bowl together into rough dough. He floured the wooden block and looked at her, “Would you knead this? Don’t overdo it. I’ll be right here. Supervising.”

“Why can’t you?” she sipped.

He opened the distance between them slightly, lifting his bandaged hand.

“What happened?”

“A kid bit me today.”

“Brute.”

“Beast.

“You’re a healer… why not heal it?”

“I’m exhausted today.”

“You look tired.”

“You know, I hate it when people say that. It really means, ‘You look ugly.’”

“You _don’t_ look ugly.”

“Knead.”

She drank, for fortification, and then settled in the front of the block. The dough was centered in the flour he’d spread.

“I don’t want to mess it up,” she hesitated.

“Oh, for Maker’s sake,” she heard his glass settle heavily on a side table and then felt the heat of his body behind her. His arms came up around her, taking her hands in his own. He rubbed her fingertips in the excess flour and then, using her hands, he pressed the dough together, rounded and smoothed and then folded one edge up and center, then the other.

She felt his breath by her ear, fluttering in a wisp of her hair, warm and whiskey tinged. She wanted to say something smart, but could think of nothing… instead melting into the sensation of his body pressed against hers, his hands directing her hands, molding them around the dough, his fingers on top of her own, pressing, curving.

She let her eyes flutter closed and leaned back into him. She felt a rumble inside his chest though she heard him say nothing, and his hands stilled on hers.

“That’s it,” he said, his voice soft against her ear, “don’t overdo it.”

“Never,” her eyes popped open, and she stared down at their hands, feeling his fingers mesh their way between hers, “that’s not my style.”

He pulled away from her, and she leaned forward, reaching for her glass.

He cut the dough into squares and quickly settled them on the bakestone, all but one, which he carefully took the time to mold into the shape of a heart, mindful to keep the dough in his uninjured palm.

“I forgot he did that,” she said, her tone strangely reverent, watching just his hands.

“Every time,” he replied, finishing then placing the heart-scone with the rest, “Do you have an egg?”

“Uh… she dug through the sack of groceries she’d spent too much money on (but she could, now that they'd raised more than enough to talk to Varric's bastard brother again) and came towards him with one brown egg cradled in her palm. He cracked it with one hand into a dish, added just a bit of milk and sugar and fashioned a brush out of another tea-towel. He brushed the tops of the scones and then swung the bakestone over the fire on its little crane, then stood, surveying his work.

“Anders?”

“What?” he turned slightly.

She took his face between flour covered hands, still sticky with bits of dough. He looked down at her, his face cast in warm firelight and shadow, and looped his arms lightly around her small waist.

She kissed the smile hidden in the corner of his mouth.

He exhaled against her, squeezing her tighter, and when she went to pull back, he stopped her, kissing her firmly, his lips soft but urgent against her own. A needy noise left her throat, and she wrapped her arms around his neck, pulling herself closer to him, body to body. The tip of her tongue skated across his full lower lip and he groaned into her mouth before returning in kind, then plunging in, tasting her.

She pushed him backwards until his back was against the wall, she pulled away from his mouth and attempted to kiss his neck. She laughed, thickly, “Fuck, Anders, how tall are you?”

“W-what?”

“You kept growing… you slouch, so its hard to tell… but I can barely reach…” he snickered once and moved, lowering himself into a seated position on the little table in the corner, certain that it could hold his weight. He positioned her between his long spread legs, and she purred approval, moving herself in against him languidly. She pressed a wet kiss against the juncture of his neck and shoulder, and he sighed, relaxing.

“Is that good? Do you like that?” she murmured into his skin, tracing her finger from the base of one ear down along his throat to the bone at the top of his chest while on the other side she kissed up, taking the soft lobe of his ear between her teeth and biting, feeling the nearly closed hole of an old piercing with the tip of her tongue. His breathing hitched.

He nodded, and turned his face back to her, capturing her jaw with one hand, “I fucking love your mouth, have I ever told you that?”

“No.”

“I fucking love your mouth,” he smiled, eyes gone dark, and kissed her again, harder now, pushing her enough that she had to push back.

The room was filled with the sound of them scraping together, mouths and clothes and breath, and the smell of scones… baked correctly this time and so innately familiar to both of them that, with eyes closed, they could imagine that they were not in Kirkwall at all, but in the house in Lothering, keeping warm and telling stories to while away the snowy day.

The thought gave him pause, and he stopped, swallowed hard, and blinked, kissing her very softly, the ghost of a kiss.

This was Marian. His Marian. Under all of it… that’s who this woman in his arms was.

“Hey,” she said softly, kissing the space between his eyelid and brow, “Where’d you go?”

“Th-they’re nearly done.”

“Okay…” she peered at him, brushing hair away from his face that had come loose.

He pushed her back too gently and stood, going back to the fire. He’d judged it correctly, and reached for a towel to buffer between his hand and the hot crane, turning the plate towards him away from the fire.

He dumped her awful scones into the bin and carefully moved the new ones onto the plate, nestling the heart-shaped one on top of the pile. He set the plate on the wooden block and looked up at her.

Her face was flushed, rubbed raw in places in by the stubble on his face and neck. She had her arms folded in front of her, across her small chest.

He’d been with many people over the ten years between them. Men and women. He’d loved one of them, besides her.

Just one.

And he’d lost him.

Anders had intentionally not thought about Karl much… and had never ended up telling her about him. He remained one of the multitudes of secrets that separated him from her.

But he thought of Karl now, the extraordinary man he was; the mage who had been able to help the Wardens in a time of need… and did so selflessly at great personal risk. A man who’d seen his heart. A man he’d given himself to fully and completely. A man he’d loved for years as the last love he’d ever know until that night on the damned Chantry floor.

In his life, Anders had loved two people. One of them stood in front of him now, awkwardly averting her eyes and shifting her weight like a kid.

But they weren’t kids anymore.

He was on her again, this time pressing her into the wall, holding her in place with his hips. She looked up at him, worrying her lower lip with even white teeth. He tilted her jaw up with a crooked finger, “I didn’t want them to burn.”

“Good thinking. I don’t think I bought enough stuff to make a third batch.”

“You didn’t. Where’s your bed, Marian?”

She licked her lips, and swallowed, “In there.”

He dipped his head and kissed her, “How long do we have?”

“An hour? Maybe--”

“Great.”

“I was supposed to clean--”

“It looks clean to me,” he kissed her, then took her hand and lead her towards her room.

He laughed.

A bunk bed.

“Top or bottom?” he asked as she shut the door behind herself and leaned against it.

“Ugh. Bottom.”

The bottom bunk nearly rested on the floor itself. A tiny fire had nearly died out in the small hearth, but they didn’t need the warmth. He did want light though, he wasn’t about to not see her, and lit a few nubby candles on the crate that clearly served as her nightstand.

“I’ll never get tired of seeing you do that,” she whispered as he pulled her close to himself.

“Do what?”

“Lighting candles with your bare fingers. Healing wounds. Shooting lighting. Magic.”

He chuckled, kissing her then crouching down low enough to get himself settled on the low bed, “I have other tricks too.”

“Oh yeah?”

“Mmhmm,” he smiled and she crawled in on top of him, straddling his legs. Flat on his back, his feet dangled off the edge, but he didn’t care. “Have you ever been with a mage?”

She shook her head, then kissed a trail down from his still clothed sternum to his hip, “Never.”

Her tone suggested that there was more to the story than that… but it was for another time. He felt her nip at his hip through his pants as one of her hands slid up under the fabric of his shirt.

He exhaled unevenly, her fingers elegant and nimble on the skin stretched over his ribs and scraping through the hair on his belly.

She raised up, settling her weight over his pelvis with a content moan and quickly pulled off her shirt. As per usual, she wore nothing beneath. Small pert breasts, almost exactly as he remembered them, but maybe even a fraction smaller. She was thin, wiry… hardened by the lifestyle of a Kirkwall mercenary who had neither the aptitude nor time to bake or cook anything that would keep meat on her bones.

He was skinny too, he thought, a fact she’d seen soon enough for herself.

He looked up at her face, then curled up, shifting her, holding one breast in his hand and taking the soft pink nipple of the other in his mouth. Nibbling gently, while he sucked, he rolled the other between his thumb and forefinger and gave her just the faintest tickle of magic, neither hot nor cold but… magic. She gasped and writhed against him, her head back, exposing the long gracefully line of her throat.

“Anders…”

He gave her another wave, sucking a little bit harder and then pulling away from her with an audible noise. She curled into him, his fingers still toying with her, and kissed him.

She tugged at the hem of his shirt and pulled it up and over his head. She took him in, and he sat very still, realizing that it was the first time anyone had seen him since…

Since Justice. He’d healed all of his own wounds since then, in his own time, and he wore clothing that covered everything from the neck down. She said nothing, and her face, which he watched intently, belied nothing of her thoughts.

He was scarred. He knew that the wounds he had incurred and survived would have killed anyone else. Anyone who didn’t have a freshly initiated Fade spirit residing inside of them, that is. Stabbed, run through, flogged, burned… his body was a wreck. He had not bothered healing any of it to the point of eliminating the scars, because the scars didn’t seem to matter anymore.

She traced one long cruel line of white hardened skin from just below his armpit to his hip with her fingers. Then she crouched and followed the same line with tongue and lips and teeth.

He arched beneath her, gasping at the sensation, pulling in air like a fish.

“Fuck!”

Kissing her way along a scar on his belly, one of her hands ventured lower, holding the weight of him in her hand, and not quite stroking… petting. He was hot and harder than he’d been in years.

He growled, thrusting against her hand, and at her toothy grin, he somehow maneuvered them over, pressing her onto her back and stripping off her brown woven pants. She wore nothing under these, either.

He settled between her legs, spreading them, kissing his way from one knee along the soft inner thigh, and then kissing her mound, brushing his nose into the dark hair that whorled in ancient designs against her white flesh.  
He nipped at her thigh and spread her open with two fingers, flesh parting to reveal the prettiest, pinkest cunt he’d ever seen.

“Fuck, you’re beautiful,” he growled, ghosting one finger along the pink flesh just inside the line of hair and found her already slick with want. He rumbled against her skin possessively and lowered himself, her legs over his shoulders and kissed her, tasted her… worshiped her while she writhed and clutched at his tangled hair. She tasted like the tangy ozone of spent magic. Electric and sweet. Life itself. He dragged his tongue from the bottom of her slit to the top, and she moaned at that, her legs quaking by his ears as he gently pressed back the hood of skin covering the bundle of nerves he had fantasized about his entire sexual life.

She thrashed then held still, so still as he edged her closer and closer to the brink, to oblivion. She gave herself to it, and he felt her muscles tense, watched her taut belly as her breath grew ragged, erratic.

“Talk to me,” she turned her head to the side and looked down at him, panting.

“I’ve wanted this for so long… _fuck_. To know what your cunt taste like, feels like… to feel your...” he paused and traced her lips all the way around, settling back, his thumb tracing soft circles on her pearl as he spoke, only to be replaced by his tongue when he didn’t speak, “…to fuck you with my fingers, to feel you _come_ on my tongue.”

His breath was hot on her. He sucked her nub, moaning into her and flicking his tongue quickly while two fingers slipped in and out, stretching her, curling and seeking out the spongy tissue inside he knew would bring her closer still.

“Anders…”

“Come for me,” he curled his fingers and found the spot inside, giving her a soft warm vibration there. Warm then cool then warm, fingers purring deep inside. His tongue was against her all the while, moaning into her as she tightened around him, as she came, fingers digging into his hair, crying out his name.

He lapped at her gently as she came back down, careful not to be too heavy handed…

“Shit…” she had her eyes closed, her arms flopped unceremoniously at her sides. He still worked two fingers in and out, smiling against her skin, and the motion lured her back to him. She ground down on him.

“I don’t want to wait anymore…” she said firmly. He pulled out of her and she dragged him up to her level, “Take these off.”

He did, quickly, not caring about the scars on his legs now that she’d seen the rest. His cock ached, red and leaking, and he shuddered when she took him in her hand and pumped, once, twice, cupping a warm damp hand protectively around his balls, the tip of her middle finger pressing firmly against the stretch of skin behind—

He pushed her back, “I don’t want to wait either.”

He kissed her, shivering when she lapped at her chin, tasting herself on him and positioned the head of his cock at her entrance.

“Look at me,” she said, and his eyes snapped to her.

Keeping his eyes fixed on hers, he pushed into her heat, slowly, with all he control he had in his frayed electric body. He mouth was open, and she held his gaze as he pressed further, forever, into her.

“Fucking finally,” she gave a shuddering laugh, gasping when he shifted, adjusting the angle of his hips.

Her eyes slipped closed and he buried his face in the curve of her neck, thrusting shallowly, grunting into her.

“ _…feels so good…_ ” his voice was thick, his brain humming. If he spoke after that, he would have no memory of what… only the vague inclination that he _begged_.

She lifted her thighs, hooking her ankles around his hips, opening herself even more for him.

“Fuck me. Please.”

He did. It could have been forever, days, the rest of his life as far as he could tell. All he knew was Hawke. She was all he’d ever known. When he came, he was aware of the briefest flash of blue at the edge of his vision. Just a moment. She saw it too, but she stayed serene beneath him, as he still thrust into her, the shudders of orgasm leaving him in waves… pleasure pumping in his blood beyond definition, he collapsed onto her, kissing the sweat that pooled in the hollow of the throat.

 _He had just fucked Marian Hawke._

They said nothing. Their bodies were pressed tightly together on the narrow bunk bed, sweat and come thick and warm where they could not, or would not, pull away from each other.

“Thanks, that was fun,” she said, finally, turning her head towards him.

While his heart slowed down and the desire and adrenaline in his blood ebbed, he heard her. Tight voice, pleasant but distant, cordial. In that instant, she had shut herself off from him in a way his currently sluggish brain couldn’t fully grasp. _**Thanks, that was fun?** Fuck you, Marian… that was life changing._

He didn’t say that.

 _Thanks, that was fun was a routine statement_. He said it too, often, when he’d been with someone for fun. A lay. A fuck. He knew that in the years apart, they had both fucked a lot of people… part of him wondered if it had been for her, as it admittedly had been for him, an attempt to fill a void that had been left by the other. More than sex, more than the body… she had been something to him that couldn’t be labeled. Sister. First Love. Best Friend. Lover. Pain in His Bloody Arse.

He wanted her, her. He always had. And this had only crystallized that want into a sharp edged thing that rattled against his heart and gut and cut at him inside.

“They’ll be back soon,” she said, her eyes refocusing on the slats of the bed above them. He saw candle light through the sapphire irises like sunlight through a prism, “We should clean up?”

“Yeah…” he swallowed as she sat up beside him, pulling her body from his.

She stood naked in the center of the room, damp and lithe and beautiful, and he wanted nothing more than to reach for her, to compel her to let down whatever walls she had just thrown up.

“Marian?”

“Yes?”

The look she gave him. An intimate warning communicated at the level they had once been at for so long together… speaking without words. Dangerous things. Speaking of fear and hurt and, most dangerous of all, vulnerability.

He bit his reply carefully, feeling each word as the broken-glass ball of want shredded him to bits.

“Thanks. That was fun.”

The walls went back up, “Yeah. We should do it again some time.”

“I’d like that.”

She gave him a faint, sad smile.

The next day, they began final preparations to head into the Deep Roads.


	5. 5. Lothering, Spring.

_Crack._

Marian swung the thin branch like a whip against the trunk of the unfortunate tree. _whoosh-Crack._

It was near dinnertime, but the sky was still bright and the air was still warm… the day’s worth of sunshine still present in the soil and the rocks and the tree itself. Pressing her ten-year-old hand against it, it felt warm, alive.

 _whoosh-Crack_

She had made only a thin indentation in the bark, but it didn’t matter. She felt the impact in her arm like the little shock she felt after rubbing the fabric of her wool dress against her cloak. Snap… a little spark at her fingers… just like magic, but gone too fast.

 _whoosh-Crack._

Da had all but ignored her since coming back with that boy.

 _whoosh-Crack._

When the twins were born, she’d lost a lot of the time with Da. But she loved them. It was okay to share Da with them because of that. Because she loved them.

And now, all he did was spend time with the boy and Bethany. Because they were extraordinary. Special.

Bethany she could forgive… she was Da’s daughter too. And Bethany was sweet and scared and needed Da. It was unusual for a mage to start developing their magic as early as Bethany had… and Da said it meant she had a tremendous amount of power. It _was_ scary.

 _whoosh-Crack._

Why couldn’t he just stay with his own parents?

 _whoosh-Crack._

Mother had yelled at her when she did it. Well, not when she did it, but when she _saw_ her. There was nothing Mother could do about it now… that was the thing about cutting hair, you couldn’t really reattach it. Marian reveled in the peculiar sound of the sharp gold-hilted blade with the etched feather slicing through the thick rope of braided hair near the base of her skull. She had wiped the blade clean and sheathed it before doing anything else, because it had belonged to Da’s Da and deserved to be treated well.

She held the braid in her hand, a warm limp snake, studying it.

She trudged to the top of the highest hill on their land and unbraided the hair, lifting it up on a breeze and letting it flutter away, black as messenger ravens on the air but light as a spider’s web.

Mother had screamed when she walked inside the kitchen, loose strands of black stray across her bare shoulders.

 _whoosh-Crack._

She would be punished when Da came home. Supposedly.

 _whoosh-Crack._

But he was gone all day with Bethany and the boy he called Anders.

“Stupid bloody name,” she let the tree trunk have it five more times in rapid succession, feeling the reverberation all the way up to her shoulder.

She didn’t regret cutting her hair off… but it had been something she just did. It felt good having her neck bare and the back of her head light. Mother called her _impulsive_. Maybe she was. It didn’t sound like a bad thing to be. It meant shecould move fast, change direction, and leap without being so bothered by the drudgery of looking.

She twisted the branch into a loop and secured it tight with a bit of twine, then slipped the circlet over her head and her short hair until it settled around her neck, the soft tattered leaves like lace against her collarbones.

Night was coming. She started home. It would be the first time Marian Hawke ever really swore.

The way home was down a little uneven pathway used by hunters, but during the winter months it had become unstable with melting snow. She tumbled, her ankle making a popping sound she could hear even through the thick leather of her boot. She rolled once, twice, three times and then caught herself, digging her nails into the soft earth and pulling at an unearthed root.

“Mother Shitter!”

She spat out a little bit of dirt and sat, touching her ankle gingerly through the boot. It wasn’t broken… but it hurt and refused to bend.

More obvious was the loose bit of white skin flapping freely above her square kneecap. Dirt and blood and gravel collected beneath the wound, which was not deep but burned.

Without thinking, she lifting the skin and tried to brush the dirt and pebbles away. This was a bad idea.

“Ahh!!! Fuck!”

Her profanity echoed back in an answering call, accompanied only by the fluttering of feathers and a cracked twig behind her.

She turned sharply, tears in her eyes.

Dressed in Da’s clothes which hung off of him and were rolled and belted to keep them on, Anders watched her.

When he’d arrived, she thought he had brown hair, but he was actually just filthy.

Mother had declared that first night that he had lice and Da had taken him outside, with a bar of harsh soap and the good kitchen shears. When he returned, he had hardly any hair left at all, but what remained was clearly blonde and fair and alien compared to the rest of them and their black, black hair. It had just started to grow out a bit now, but she could still see the round shape of his skull, silhouetted by the setting sun, nothing obscuring his long nose and dark brows. He frowned at her, and she scowled back.

“What do you want?” she asked, turning back around and stubbornly attempting to stand. Pain shot through her ankle which now felt fat and tight inside her boot. She sat back down, hard, with a hmph, and dusted the gravel from her hands.

He said nothing. He never said anything. She hated that about him. It was creepy. Da explained to the three of them that he didn’t know all that much in their tongue… but she thought he did and he just lied about it. He seemed to always be able to tell what they were saying… watching them with those dark little eyes.

“Go away.”

He didn’t move.

“Ugh. I know you can understand me. Go. Away.”

She stared forward, watching the little line of smoke rise from her chimney.

She could have hit him when she heard his footsteps approach.

“Leave me alone!”

He was standing beside her, his eyes focused on her knee. His pale hands went to the strange little pouch he always wore at his belt and took something out. Some weird _Anders_ thing.

“Hurts?”

“No. I’m fine,” she shook her head defiantly up at him.

He made a funny noise in his throat and crouched beside her. He had a little bottle in one hand and a tiny pad of linen in the other.

She tried to stand again, but fell back. He shook his head and bent over her knee, uncorking the bottle as he did so. He poured a little bit of clear fluid over her scraped knee, despite her wriggling and vulgar protests, and she felt the burning sensation ebb, then stop altogether.

He looked up at her, his brows arched.

“Yeah. It’s better.”

He smiled, but it was the strangest smile she’d ever seen. Only one side of his mouth curled and it seemed like the expression never made it to his eyes.

He cleaned the dirt and the gravel out of her knee and then placed the linen pad over it, wrapping it into place with a longer strip.

He eyed her ankle, then looked back up at her.

“It’s not broken,” she said, quieter than she had been.

He touched her boot, as if testing for heat through a door. He made a different sound in his throat and shook his head.

When he stood and offered her both his hands to help her stand, she hesitated.

“What are you doing out here?” she asked from the ground.

He shrugged, “Good to be alone.”

“If you want to be alone you can leave our house,” she said haughtily.

He frowned at her, then shook his head and bent his chin against his chest. His hands were still offered.

She groaned and took them in her own, pulling against him as he pulled her up. They were roughly the same height, and he put her arm over his shoulders.

They made slow progress back to the house as she couldn’t really put any of her weight on the fat ankle.

When they cleared the treeline, she could already hear Mother’s voice shrill and loud. She stalled.

“What’s your name anyway?”

He looked at her, “Anders.”

“Your real name?”

There was a smile in his eyes then.

He told her. Three whispered syllables that sounded just foreign enough to her to sound strange.


	6. 6. Kirkwall, Autumn

Hawke looked ghastly; there was no getting around that. Head thrown back, laughing, her hair falling into her eyes, she was drunk and bloody. They all were.

But Anders only really saw her.

“Hawke’s drunk.”

“Oh really?”

“Really,” Varric rubbed his own jaw where a bruise bloomed.

Ale in her hand, one foot propped up on the bench seat, she laughed madly. Both eyes were bruised and blood had dried in two dark tracks from her nose, which looked decidedly more crooked than it had this morning when she had skulked out of his bed just before dawn.

Isabela and Varric flanked her, the Rivaini nearly slipping under the table beside her, tears in her eyes, “…I couldn’t sit for a week!”

“Isabela! That is…” Hawke gasped for breath, “the most _disgusting_ story I’ve ever heard!” Her head came forward heavily, still laughing, she rested her weight on her forearms, “He ripped it?”

“Like wet paper,” the Rivani purred.

Hawke slapped the table with an open palm, collapsing into a fully body cackle.

“I don’t even know what to say to that,” Varric shook his head.

Isabela, regaining a little composure, pointed at Anders as he sat across from them, “Anders, you remember him.”

He raised his hands, open, “No, I’m sure I don’t.”

“You do. He was around the same time as you… you do remember, he was there the night we--”

“I _don’t_ remember him.”

“I want to hear about Denerim,” Hawke said, tucking her hair behind her ears, one of which was red and swollen, “And I want us to drink more.”

“I’m in. After a day like today…” Varric stood, “Another round?”

“Aye! A drink to _honorrrrrr_ the fallen no longer amongst us,” Hawke said in a dramatic and near perfect Starkhaven accent. With her eyes closed and head bowed she handed Varric her empty tankard.

“Did Sebastian die?” Anders asked flatly.

“No. He just _rrrrretired_ early. Fallen from all the fun we're having. You know,” she kept the accent. He hated to admit it, but he really liked hearing it come out of her mouth.

“Seems like a riot.”

“Oh. It is.”

“Blondie?”

“I’m good.”

“You _are_ good, Anders, but that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t drink. Get him one, Varric.”

“Tell you what, Blondie, I’ll finish what you can’t,” the dwarf winked, holding three empty tankards between his hands.

Anders reclined back across the table from Hawke, his arms stretched across the back of the seat. She was loose, but there was an edge to it. A manic callousness. He could argue it was adaptation, but he knew better.

He saw it sometimes, like a mask she wore, when she was tired or hurt. He had seen it ever since they came back from the Deep Roads.

Without Bethany.

 _He thought of her then, of holding her in his arms even as she was changing… the tainted blood inside him loathing the tainted blood in her. She had not wanted to fight any longer. She asked him to do it--_

The spirit inside of him rattled at the memory. His control slipped, edging into anger and frustration. The blue cracks ventured no further than along the back of his hands, which he slipped beneath the table until they faded to nothing.

Justice and he had established a fair balance… and though he knew that whatever it was in him that had altered Justice… it would have been far worse has he lived in the Circle, if Malcolm hadn’t taken him in.

He had control most of the time. But any time Hawke lead him to the Gallows and he saw the Tranquil… Justice cracked a whip inside.

Every Tranquil mage had Karl’s face.

Justice mourned Karl in a way that Anders never could… and there was a penance in that. He accepted the pain, the loss of control that he gave to the spirit inside because he, weak mortal that he was, had started to forget…

Justice, however, kept a constant painful vigil. He knew that within the chantry, there was a small sect of zealots who wore a barbed belt around their thigh each day… inflicting constant pain to remind them of the frailty of the corporeal form and the sins of their flesh.

Justice was his reminder.

 _When Hawke was like this, she_

 _wanted_
 _Justice. She said it would be like holding lightning in her hands._

He wouldn’t drink tonight, though he did sometimes still. Tonight was too volatile.

“What’d you do today?”

“I pulled teeth.”

“Literally?”

He thought back to the abscessed gums that had occupied much of his day, and rolled his head in a circle, feeling his sore neck crack, “Literally. You?”

He didn’t love it when she went without him… but he had obligations and she had… he didn’t want to say a death wish.

“Figurative teeth pulling, I’d say. Right?”

Isabela was dragging her nails lightly across the pale skin of Hawke’s inner forearm, “Bashing them in, more like.”

“How’s the nose?”

“We were without a healer today,” she muttered, “so I had Varric pop it back in place. For all his dexterity he does not have the kind of gentle touch required for--”

“You could have taken me.”

“Could have. Didn’t. It’s fine. You had teeth to pull.”

“It’s crooked.”

“It’s been crooked for a long time.”

 _When she was sixteen, Carver had slammed a door in her face and broken her nose for the first time._

“Leave it like that and it’ll affect how you breathe.”

She leaned forward then, laying a dirty hand on his, “Fix me.”

He didn’t feel like playing this game tonight.

She tested him, keeping her brilliant sharp gaze locked on him, her mouth curling into a cruel smirk, “Isabela, did you know _Anders_ isn’t his real name.”

“Oh, no?”

“No. It’s a carefully guarded secret… but no one is really named _Anders_. Have you ever met another _Anders_?”

“Can’t say I have.”

“Or a _Ferelden_? A _Marcher_?”

“I’ve met quite a few of those,” Varric returned, settling tankards down on the table.

“Certainly. But not by name. I’m the only person who knows his real name.”

“Really?”

“The only living person,” he arched an eyebrow and leaned back.

“What’s that?”

“Other people did know… but they’re all dead now.”

“That sounds like a threat.”

“No, no… not a threat. Happenstance. The people who know my real name tend to end up… dying. It’s a risky venture.”

“I’ll risk it,” Isabela’s eyes glittered first at him and then at Hawke, “Please?”

“No. I need your nimble fingers too much,” she nuzzled Isabela’s shoulder, “For lock-picking… can’t risk the loss. Who else knew? Da didn’t.”

“No… he never knew. My parents. Karl.”

“You told Karl your real name?”

“Of course I did.”

 _He thought, briefly but vividly, of Karl’s voice, rough with need; his name spoken against the skin between his shoulder blades like a prayer to an ancient god. His real name._

“Ooh… please tell me. I hate being left out.”

“I can’t. I have sworn to take it to my grave… which, apparently, might not be that far off due to the very nature of my knowing.”

He smiled at her knowingly. She wouldn’t tell… regardless of how much alcohol was in her blood or how much Isabela tried… Hawke kept secrets better than anyone he knew.

 _Damn her_.

Varric reached over and swapped his untouched ale for his emptied one while Hawke wasn’t looking.

Two tankards later, after a meandering conversation that veered from Anders’ mysterious name to the finer points of chest hair maintenance and a hazily recounted body toll for the day, Hawke stood and made her way to Anders’ lap.

“Hey, kid,” he drawled as she draped her arms around his neck, “you’re a bloody mess.”

The Hanged Man had started to empty out for the night, and as she moved, Varric and Isabela had made their exits (Varric with a sympathetic glance, Isabea with an amiable leer). They were seated near the fire. He took her chin in one hand and turned her face toward the light, getting a better look at the state of her nose.

“Where are you sleeping tonight, kid?”

“I don’t _need_ sleep,” she purred, grinding against him.

He growled quietly, then heaved a hard sigh. He hated when she was like this. It was like she was playing a character… a really obnoxious character with no sense of self preservation -- all the same, the sex was amazing.

“Do you want to go home?”

“Do I ever want to go home?” she caught his ear lobe between her teeth and bit, hard. He hissed, his hands coming up around her waist.

No. She never did.

Home was a place that had been bought with her sister’s death. It was a place her mother no longer lived, but which housed her belongings still.

Home was a mausoleum, she had told him, and she wasn’t ready to lie in state just yet.

This was why she slept beside him in the clinic more often than not.

She would come in the middle of the night, silent, and he would let her in. There was hardly enough room for him on the cot, let alone both of them. But she would curl in against his chest, under his arm, his thin blanket.

He would feel her twitch with alertness against him, wide awake, and he would offer sleep to her. A small bit of magic. She needed the rest.

Sometimes she would accept it, and he would cast a warm wave of magic over her, and feel her body go limp beside him, breath deep and even. Other times she would refuse, and remain stubbornly awake until she would finally roll over to face him in the dark. She would touch him, stroke him until he was hard in her hands and gasping her name into the darkness between them.

When she rode him, it was always with her eyes closed tight and arms braced on the wall over his head. He would watch her, his hands circled around her sweat slicked hips, gripping her ass, grunting and thrusting up into her.

He wanted it to be different. He wanted to make love to her, to look into her eyes and find her, to see her find true pleasure and not just tumble into a fleeting moment of spasm and bliss… but real happiness.

“I want to go to your home,” this came out sweet, almost childish. She nuzzled into the side of his neck.

“Only if you let me set your nose.”

“You’re into the kinkiest foreplay, Anders…”

She kissed him, there, in the tavern, her body pressed tight to his, ignored by the few bleary eyed patrons left.

Once in the clinic, he sat her down on one of the examinations tables and turned to light a few lamps.

When he turned back to her, she had pulled off her boots and leggings and was starting to remove her tunic.

He glanced at the open door, and then back at her, a hot white fire smoldering in his chest at the sight of her long white legs.

He crossed to the front of the clinic and shut, and latched, the door.

She sat there, lean and drunk, nude and bloody and he loved her. Fuck, he loved her.

“Your nose. I’ll make it quick,” he said hastily, blue already glowing at his fingertips.

“Will it hurt, Teodor?”

This stopped him in his tracks. She had never… _never_ \--

He stared at her, scoffing in stunned disbelief.

His name.

“Hawke--”

“That’s not my name. That’s my Da’s name. And my mother. And my brother. And my sister. They’re all corpses now.”

“Marian…”

He still felt it; his name like a curse or a charm, ringing in his ears. It both repulsed him and stoked the white fire which had now descended from his chest to his belly. He couldn’t move.

Her feet dangled, and she stared at them, lost in thought. When she spoke, it was as if she didn’t really speak to him at all.

“You have more of me inside of you than I do anymore. You remember who I was. I don’t believe in souls or the Maker or any of it, not in the way that Sebastian talks about it. The Soul as a thing made before we’re made and placed into our bodies? Fuck that. I believe in dreams, because I have them. I believe in memories because I have them. I think… if we have a soul… it’s made out of our memories. You have all of mine. If I died tomorrow, I’d still exist for as long as you remembered me.”

She was quiet then, and very still. He took a few deep breaths and then walked to her, taking her face between his hands.

He straightened the bone with a quick sure movement, and she blinked back tears before he could soothe the pain.

How many times had he done this? How many times had he mended her bones?

It had been just over twenty years since Malcolm Hawke had found him.

Just over twenty years since he had fallen in love with Marian Hawke.

He kissed her, softly. She tasted like a night of ale, of copper blood, of Marian.

She wore no mask now.

She spread her legs wider, letting him in closer between them and enjoying the sensation of being open, exposed, feeling the chilly damp air of the clinic on her hot skin before it was chased away by the decidedly masculine and ever present heat of Anders’ body.

He stroked her, damp dark curls and slick smooth flesh, the springy padding of her mound and the delicate but yielding petals of her lips, throbbing with life and blood and heat.

When he felt her fingers at the ties to his pants, he helped her, untying, pushing them down. He was hard, brushing against her, and she scooted closer to the edge of the table.

“Will you…” his voice sounded rough, accented even, against her neck, “will you say my name?”

She reached between them, wrapping her fingers around his cock, stroking the smooth heated skin with just the right tension in her hand, “Yes.”

“Say it.”

He felt the head of his cock against her cunt, hot and wet and perfect, and as he drove into her slowly, holding back as every muscle screamed, he heard her. Against his ear and tender as she gasped, stretching around him, “ _Teodor_.”

Her eyes slipped closed, as they always did, and he pressed his forehead to hers, his arms braced on the table on either side of her hips. He kept the pace slow… and she didn’t fight him for control. She didn’t try to lead him and turn it into something else… into fucking.

Her eyes opened, and she looked at him; he knew that if he had a soul, he had long ago left it in those blue eyes for safe keeping. They knew him as only his own soul could.

One hand holding her hip, he touched her with the other hand’s thumb, light as a falling leaf against her bundle of nerves. His hands knew how to touch her, as if the memory of her past pleasure was imprinted there as plain as his fingerprints.

She watched his hand intently. He couldn’t look away from her face, still bloody, flushed red across her cheeks, her lips swollen… but for the intensity of her gaze on where he touched her, and lower where they joined.  
His hips moved deliberately, and he saw them as if detached, entranced by the secret clash of his dark blonde hair and her black thatch, her taut pink lips around the root of his cock, slick with her wetness, pulling nearly all the way out and then slowly reentering.

Her light eyes captured what little light there was in the room and, focused and intense as her gaze was, they were iridescent. He watched, too, neck bent, and felt possession and surrender in equal measure. The eroticism and intimacy of the sight combined with the sweetly awed mewling sounds she made tightened his balls. His pace hitched.

“I need…” he faltered, his legs feeling stiff.

She nodded and wrapped arms and legs around him, squeezing him tightly in a hug.

“I do too.”

He lifted her off the table and turned, walking with her to the cot they had shared so often without leaving her.

She moaned as he walked, feeling him move against her in new ways, “ _so deep_ ,” she shuddered.

When he lowered her, she pulled away just enough that he slipped out.

She pulled him down, turning him onto his back on the cot, then slid down. She sat between his thighs facing him, her long lean legs draped over his, her feet near his ribs on either side. He gasped and the world tilted as she took him in her mouth, cheek hollowed, tasting herself on him, moaning. His hands were buried in her hair.

The flat of her tongue drove him mad as she swept the underside of his cock, hands cupping him, tonguing his balls, her rhythm relaxed. She smiled against him, and he felt it, aware then that he had been mumbling nonsensically, far from lucid and dazed with pleasure.

She was gone.

He nearly shouted as she pulled away, but her thumb against the corner of his mouth as she settled over him, straddling him brought him back. He took her thumb into his mouth as she lowered onto him, inch by inch and furnace hot.

She rode him hard, but it was different. She was so open, present, she never looked away from him for long… only when the pleasure between them forced her to just close her eyes and breathe and feel it.

She came, not moving but just pressed tight against him, fluttering around him, saying his name, saying _Teo_. He felt it happen inside of her, fluttering tissue and nerves and a kind of magic that didn’t have a name, that didn’t glow, that was just her.

He followed, thrusting up into her as she curled forward, their hands woven together, her weight supported by his arms.

Sweat cooled on her back but she felt cozy, draped snugly over him. Lust sated, she felt the friendly thrum of fading drunkenness again, a warm buzz in her cheeks. His thumbs trailed lazy designs against the crease where the soft curve of her thighs joined her hips. His eyes were closed, and his face relaxed.

She thought for a moment that he’d fallen asleep.

But he spoke.

“Do you think…”

He trailed off, eyes still closed, a faint curious smile tugging at his mouth.

“What?”

“Us. Do you think we’ll ever…” he swallowed, “do you think we’ll ever do this on a full sized bed?”

She laughed, a snort. His smile was wide, and he laughed, the sound reverberating deeply in his chest.

“I don’t know, Anders. We’ve become really accustomed to single occupancy fucking.”

He smiled still, but the laughter trailed. He grasped her hips between his hands, “That’s not what this was.”

“I know,” her reply was gentle.

“All the same… maybe we should get a slightly bigger bed for this place. A couple of nightstands. Sheets. More than one pillow--”

“Are you asking me to move in, Anders?”

“Yes, Hawke,” his tone was jovial in the peculiar way that post-coital Anders was jovial, “Will you do me the honor of sharing my hovel?”

She smirked, “Okay.”

“Yeah?”

“On one condition… we keep the corpses somewhere else.”

“There are no corpses here, Marian.”

“I know.”

He pulled her close, his breath deep, and she let herself fall asleep with him, on him. Secure there in a place where they protected each other’s souls, guarded each other’s secrets, shielded scars and knew each other by their true names.


End file.
